Great Reads in January from NYTimes Non-fiction Bestsellers

My personal reading challenge in January was to read from the NY Times Non-Fiction Bestsellers List. How lucky was I to find autobios/memoirs from two of my favorite musicians, Willie Nelson and Neil Young!

That was at the end of December, when I made up my list of three of the best sellers I wanted to read in January and put those books on hold at my library. Now, one month later, on the updated list, those two books are gone. Great serendipity here! I'm NOT a bestseller reader at all, and I would have missed these books, had I not set this great year-long reading challenge for myself.

On my public library's website, they have a list of LISTS. So I've chosen a different list for each month of the coming year and I'll concentrate my reading on those books. In February, I'll be reading a lot of children's books as I read from the Coretta Scott King Awards list in honor of Black History Month. I have alternated the adult and children's lists, and it looks like a year of very interesting reading --- as evidenced by the great books I started the New Year with. 

Happy New Year & Happy Reading to you!

WAGING HEAVY PEACE 

by Neil Young
©2012 (497 pages)

This five-star autobiography of one of my favorite rock musicians got off to a slow start for me. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Canadian superstar spent the first hundred pages going on and on about his hobby of model trains, his work toward developing better sound quality for users of modern electronic music-listening devices, and his collection of rare cars.

But he was only warming up with the many things that he’s passionate about: his family, his music, his friends, his inventions, his visions for the future. The book was full of interesting stories of the people and bands he made music with, as well as personal anecdotes about his family life, his work for the betterment of small farmers as co-founder of Farm Aid, his founding of the Bridge School for severely handicapped children, and his soon-to-be unveiled LincVolt car, a 1959 Lincoln Continental he’s converting to hybrid technology.

With a music career spanning 4 decades and 32 studio albums, he has a lot to talk about. If you don’t mind passages with technical stuff, he balances the technology (recording music, converting cars, always trying to find a better way to do something) with a personal memoir that seemed honest and tender, full of love and peace.

This book was especially nostalgic for me because I’ve loved Neil Young and his music since I was a teenager. I know his songs well. He was my favorite member of CSN&Y way back when, and I’m familiar with many of his L.A. haunts from when I lived there briefly in the 1970s.

If you’re a fan or a rockologist, you’ll want to grab this new book. If you just don’t know, check him out on Youtube, in a September interview with David Letterman, in which he explains his new high-definition, music-listening device, the Pono, and introduces his then just-released autobiography.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GrgTiqZCF0&list=FLSg-xvyNWB2Of7wbYVQEZRg&index=3



ROLL ME UP AND SMOKE ME WHEN I DIE
by Willie Nelson
©2012  (169 pages)

This was a quick, easy read because it was made up of small sections, so you could stop reading anywhere and pick it back up later without any problems. However, I read it straight through, laughing all the way.

Willie looks back on over 7 decades of making music with his friends and family, cracks dirty jokes and uses “bad language”, and discusses issues important to him. The gray-shaded blocks of text are where family and friends pay tribute to Willie and his music. Various song lyrics are interspersed throughout the book.

I enjoyed the book, even though I don’t think he’s the best singer-songwriter ever, and even though I didn’t necessarily agree with his politics or his ideas about things like reincarnation. I did agree with him on many of the social issues he raised, so the difference in our politics was a bit jarring and disappointing to me.

This is a happy-go-lucky, spontaneous memoir that almost felt like a goodbye, as he named the different people he’s worked with over the years, told a few funny stories about them, and then thanked them for being in his life. He did a lot of thanking in this book, and it always felt warm and sincere.

Willie turns 80 in April. I’m glad he wrote his memoir while he still has time. He’s always been a hard-working, but laid-back, country-western outlaw who surrounded himself with talented musicians and the love of his large, extended Texas family. He’s had a great life, and it shines through in a book that feels like you’re there, listening to him spin his yarns.


UNBROKEN
Laura Hillenbrand
©2010 (398)

By now, I’m sure most people know all about this book and its heartbreaking but inspiring WW2 POW survival story. I’m not kidding, if this book was fiction, it would be unbelievable. If they don’t make it into a movie, they’re missing real Oscar potential.

It’s a book that was both hard for me to read and yet hard to put down. At about halfway through the almost 400 pages, I didn’t think I could go on another page. But having read the word “survival” in the book’s subtitle, I knew the story’s main character was going to make it to the finish, so I was determined to hang in there, too.

I went on-line and read about the author. I found out that this is only her second book. Her first, Seabiscuit (which I also loved), enjoyed a spot on the NYTimes bestseller list (2001-2002) for 30 weeks!

This 45-year-old writer spent seven years`on the research and writing of Unbroken. That the book is heavily annotated (50 pages of notes), along with 7 pages of acknowledgments by the author, attests to the fact that this was a well-researched book. The page-turner narrative style of the author was complimented by sensitive, well-done portrayals of the many characters in the book. It is definitely one of those books that make you feel "you are there."

Laura Hillenbrand contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome when she was in college, which has left her pretty much home-bound since. She once spent 2 and a half years without leaving her house at all because of her debilitating health condition.
While writing this book, she interviewed Louie Zamperini (the protagonist POW survivor of whom Unbroken was written) over the phone 75 times, developing a friendship in absentia. When “the Zamp” finally learned about her illness after reading an interview she had done, he was so inspired he sent her one of his Purple Heart medals, saying she deserved it more than he did.

For the past year I’ve been struggling to learn how to live with my own debilitating health condition, fibromyalgia. I have to say, I’ve been doubly blessed and doubly inspired by reading how an American POW war hero and his biographer (for whom writing is “an escape”) have dealt with the incredible pain in their own lives.

If you haven’t read this book yet, you’re missing out on a wonderful WW2 story of courage and survival by a writer who says, "I'm looking for a way out of here [her disability]. I can't have it physically, so I'm going to have it intellectually. It was a beautiful thing to ride Seabiscuit in my imagination. And it's just fantastic to be there alongside Louie as he's breaking the NCAA mile record. People at these vigorous moments in their lives - it's my way of living vicariously."

Here’s the fascinating web article where I got most of my info about the author:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/28/AR2010112803533_3.html

2012 End-of-the-Year Update

Wow!  I can't believe how badly I've neglected my book blog. My apologies. I didn't do much reading in November, when the weather really started giving me pain. 

A painful smile after hiking Starved Rock St. Park

I read voraciously on my good days, stealing precious moments that I should be tending the wood stove, doing the laundry, walking the dog (it's too cold outside!), running the vaccuum, mopping up muddy paw prints (canine, human, and sometimes sneaky feline).

Below are some reviews from a few of the books I read in November and December:

HALF BROKE HORSES - Jeannette Walls (273)

c. 2009  I’ve been meaning to read this book ever since I read Jeannette Walls autobiography, The Glass Castle over a year ago.  I enjoyed that rollicking book so much, I just had to read the story of the author’s grandmother.

Lily Casey was quite a character.  She grew up on a rustic homestead in gritty western Texas and was helping her father break horses at the age of six.  Without even an eighth-grade education, she got her first job, at age 15, as a teacher in remote northern Arizona.  It took her a whole month of riding alone on her favorite mustang, Patches, to cover the 500 miles it took to get there.

In a harsh country of droughts, sandstorms, tornadoes and flash floods, Lily grew up fast and resilient, married a good man, and had two children. The girl, Rosemary, grew up to be the author’s equally unusual mother, an important character her autobiography.

Although a true story, this book is called a “novel” by the author because it was based on family legends and second-hand anecdotes about her wild-West ancestor. Lily Casey died when her grand-daughter was a little girl, so Walls didn’t personally remember that much about her. Told in first-person, I thought the author really captured the “voice” of her grandmother, distinctly different from her own voice as the grand-daughter in The Glass Castle.

I was also interested in reading this book because my own grandmother, according to our family legends, was quite a horse trainer herself.  She moved west as a young bride and bore the first two sons of eleven children in a tiny sod cabin on the Kansas-Oklahoma border.  I could easily see in Lily Casey a lot of the pioneer spirit my own dear grandmother had.

Both books are quick, easy reads and immensely fascinating. 5 stars & highly recommended.

THE LACUNA - Barbara Kingsolver (507)

c. 2009  Barbara Kingsolver is a favorite author of mine. But I must admit, this wasn’t a favorite among the books I’ve read by her. Weighing in at a little over 500 pages, I thought it would never end.

Nine years separated Kingsolver’s fifth (The Poisonwood Bible) and this, her sixth, novel. Not having read The Poisonwood Bible, I don’t know if she was experimenting with something new in her writing, or if she was simply being overly-ambitious with such a large subject --- but this book fell a bit short of the epic it seems to try to be.

Told through the journals and letters of a (fictitious) famous author, who is half-Mexican, half-American and grew up in Mexico, this historical novel centers around cold-war politics after WW2, and its effect on individual “freedoms”. The author also adds in some real and imagined news clippings that help establish the setting: a time of fear and suspicion in our country.  Using this format for shaping her story, the author runs the risk of a choppy feel. And there were times when it did seem that way.  Also there were long stretches of boredom, when the book just failed to hold my attention.

I enjoyed the “Frida” part of the book and that, in itself, would have been enough for me. I could have used a little more of it. It was a colorful and lively beginning to what turned into a dark and gloomy tale. But this wasn’t just a story of camaraderie with the Riveras, who young Shepherd had worked for back in Mexico. In having Shepherd’s life continue on in the U.S. as he matures into a successful author, Kingsolver demonstrates that a pleasurable, passionate time early in a person’s life can have unforeseen consequences later on down the road.

Several times in the book, it is remarked that the average American doesn’t have a clue what a Communist is or looks like. I’d also add that there aren’t many people left who are old enough to remember McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s. Even if they did, what would they remember of it?  Did they even understand what was happening? Were they aware of how public opinion was being swayed and shaped by the media (primarily newspapers and magazines back then)? Could history repeat itself?

I rate this book 3.5 stars, better than average. If you read it for no other reason than to familiarize yourself with the Cold War and the era of McCarthyism, it will have been time well spent. I was impressed by Kingsolver’s historical reference list --- more good reading there.

 

THE END OF OIL - Paul Roberts (332)

c.2004  The big, oily teardrop on the book’s cover tells the whole story: The world will soon run out of oil. Then what? If you think the scientists, geologists, and governments have this all planned out and under control, you’d better read this book.

“Americans are, in general, the least energy-conscious people in the world. We are not only profoundly ignorant about what energy is, and the critical role it has played and continues to play in economics and politics, but most of us simply don’t care about energy,” explains the author.

This sometimes wordy, but comprehensive. guide to the energy economy was slow reading, but I learned so much from it. There were times when I thought the author was being repetitious. The book seemed like it would never come to an end. It had so many facts and figures, and yet it was never boring. Just slow going for me.

There’s also the problem of the material being dated (2004).  I would like to find another book, like this one, that shows what’s going on now, in 2012.

I probably liked this one so much because it mirrors my own opinions on the subject.  You could probably read the prologue and the last two chapters and still get the gist of this doomsday scenario. Five stars and highly  recommended.

That's enough for today. 

I'll see what I can scrape up for tomorrow.